September 2010: A Panel Discussion on the Political Causes and Effects of Top-End Inequality

Shortly after the September release of their acclaimed book, Winner-Take-All Politics, Jacob Hacker (Yale University, Political Science) and Paul Pierson (University of California-Berkeley, Political Science) headlined a panel discussion in Cambridge co-sponsored by the Tobin Project and the Harvard Kennedy School. Professors Hacker and Pierson, who were joined by Archon Fung(Harvard Kenndy School), Alex Keyssar(Harvard Kennedy School), and Theda Skocpol (Harvard University, Sociology), debated the implications of increasing income concentration before a standing-room-only crowd of over 160 students, faculty, and community members.

“Other than the usual anger at our incumbent politicians ... there is a deafening silence in our broader political discourse, and even in professional scholarship, about the political causes of the current [economic] crisis, business power, and growing inequality. Jacob and Paul begin to fill that silence.”– Archon Fung, Comments on Winner-Take-All Politics